Madam,

I read weekly how Bronglais Hospital is both overspent on its budget and short of ‘medical staff’. They it seems have numerous, expert, administrative staff to cope with their ever-increasing workload which they are at liberty it seems to be able to produce in bureaucracy.

May I suggest on behalf of both my wife and myself, who are trying to have orthopaedic knee replacements, that we the patients are forced to jump through many hoops in attending unnecessary appointments to fill forms in and read expensive, laminated literature, while a state enrolled nurse fills in another questionnaire!

The last appointment was a good hour and a half and took place upon the third of such unnecessary appointments for my wife.

The question at issue is why the health board, or come to that the NHS, has a shortage of nurses? The real answer is because of government policies and the changes in nurses’ training.

Also, both doctors and nurses receive their respective education and qualifications free and yet they have no fixed employment to repay the country with, say, a five-year contract to work in the NHS.

Newly-qualified nurses will either emigrate to countries where there is a better paid future, work in the private sector or sign up and become an agency nurse where the wages are twice as much as if they had committed themselves to a hospital or trust!

The nursing problem could be solved easily if the health board allowed the hospital nurses overtime instead of paying vast amounts of time to agency nurses. Nurses should be taught on the job, instead of sending them off to universities. This alas will never happen unless we complain and fight for it when there is an election.

Yours etc,

Mohammad Tahla, Llanarth.

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